Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.

I had this problem and tried the restart - didn't work - then went through a whole series of suggested fixes and eventually ended up with a windiw which said "Windows cannot repair your computer" At this point everything seized up and the only option I could use was to reset the computer. A nuisance as I lost some programs but not too bad as it was my old desktop and we now use laptops for everything and I was able to restore from the laptops.

My solution

Mysterious loss of Win10 1607 Wi-Fi connections

After installing update and rebooting my WiFi connection was gone. I clicked on Internet Access and re selected my WiFi connection from the list. Then my WiFi worked. Some more downloading occurred. No problems since.

I had the same problem on two Win 10 machines and tried the usual restart, rechecking login info, resetting router. Why I even thought of and hadn't thought of it in years - reset winsock (netsh winsock reset) from DOS prompt with administrator settings. Go figure.

The Following User Says Thank You to Frankgen99 For This Useful Post:

Check Your IP Addresses

This same issue occured to two of my clients and in both cases the subnet mask IP address had been changed. I simply corrected the error and all was good. Sometimes it's the simple stuff that we forget to consider.

I found this article rather unfocused. First a discussion of a specific issue, a link to a discussion elsewhere, then a list of troubleshooting techniques that have no apparent relationship with the problem. Seems there was 2 different articles here.

I have had four people call me in the past week not able to connect to the Internet even though the previous day there were no problems and they were connecting via the LAN connection. After going over with them on the phone the usual things to try, after I had each do a system restore they were then able to get on the Internet. The only thing I could chalk it up to would have been an update that was installed when they turned their computers on that messed things up.

I showed them to look for updates being downloaded and installing before shutting down. After all in previous versions of Windows did not like being cut off while an update was being installed so I would assume Windows 10 would be the same way.

If System Restore had not been turned on (off by default!), the fix might not have been so easy.

I found this article rather unfocused. First a discussion of a specific issue, a link to a discussion elsewhere, then a list of troubleshooting techniques that have no apparent relationship with the problem. Seems there was 2 different articles here.

Two different restarts too; without shift to address the specific issue, but with shift for the generic troubleshooting.

The Following User Says Thank You to andrewbenn For This Useful Post:

Looks like Microsoft's updating is getting nothing but more troublesome than ever. Way to fix things, MS!
On top of that, their new (as of W8) "Shut down" that is actually more like hibernate has caused an additional problem. I never liked the change. Just to give the impression that it's the operating system that will allow your computer/device to start up quicker. Actually, my W-7 desktop cold-starts quicker using a SSD than it did from hibernation with a spinning HD.
Maybe they should have devices "shut down" when you choose "Shut down"?

Restart did not work, IPCONFIG showed that there was no Default Gateway. Rebooting cable modem and router did not work. Going into the router directly did not change anything. What did work was Restarting in Safe Mode with Networking. This allowed me to get onto the internet. When I rebooted into normal startup, all worked fine. Go figure???

On my Win10 test system, I was surprised to find that there wasn't a single restore point, even though it had the service turned on for a while. To test the system, I created a restore point manually via Control Panel/System/System protection/Create, and it did show up when I used the Restore tool in Advanced options.

This is because Microsoft disabled automatic nightly restore points in Windows 8-10 along with most of the other Windows 7 file recovery features (automatic shadow copies, etc).

Out of frustration I wrote a utility called U-Recover to bring back all of these Windows 7 file recovery features on Windows 10 including scheduled restore points.

Computer Consultant/Technician since 1998 (first PC was Atari 1040STE in 1988).
Most common computing error is EBKAC: Error Between Keyboard And Chairback
Confuscius said: "no use running harder if you're on the wrong road" and "any problem once correctly understood is already half-solved".

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